Keep moving on the spiritual path from the lower truth to higher truth, until you come to that place deep within you, one that is silent, that is peaceful, and that is pure beingness and beyond judgment. As you progress, keep letting go of the many impurities that get stuck to the so-called religious and spiritual paths and “isms.”

There is a large billboard sign along the Saw Mill River Parkway north of New York City that reads in big bold letters, “Prayer Works.” There are no other words on the sign. A man named Tom rode by that sign every single day on his way to work. He did not believe in prayer and he scoffed at the sign each day.

You will never be Jesus or Mother Teresa or Buddha or Pema Chodron or Buckminster Fuller or Eckhart Tolle (to name a few great teachers at random). You can only be yourself every moment. Discover who you are, and you find your own unique path along the way.

No sooner had I made the decision to spend several months in the mountains of northern New Mexico, than my inner knowingness guided me to the timeless, secluded village of Chimayo. Little did I suspect that this idyllic setting would host a gut-wrenching transformation..

I ask you to think about this question: do you really ask for help when you need it? If the answer is yes, do you ask for assistance with the little things in your life or only the big-ticket items? And who or what defines little...

Type “Holy Grail” into Google and … well, you probably don’t need me to finish that sentence. The sheer multiplicity of what any search engine throws up demonstrates that there is no clear consensus as to what the Grail is or was.

One morning I awoke and realized I had absolutely no plans for the day. The gallery was closed until the weekend, and I was open to anything. I checked in with stillness, trying yet again to hear the “Holy Spirit.” To my surprise, I heard a quiet, still voice within me quite clearly. It was like an inner dialogue...

Each of us creates our own karma. Our past thoughts, speech and behavior have shaped our present reality, and our actions (and thoughts and speech) in the present will in turn affect our future. The Buddhist doctrine of karma is not fatalistic. Karma is...

When someone dies at home, everyone in the family is affected. Looking after a relative who is at the end of their life can be enormously rewarding, but carers have many unmet information and support needs. This can take a toll on their physical and emotional health.

Dance as liturgy or ritual has always been a way to honor the sacred, the mystery, turning into the spiral of life and the universal, the ever-present flow of the Divine force. It has profound implications for healing, psychotherapy, spiritual growth, and the full unfolding of human potential.

One of the ego’s chief delusions is the idea of sin, which has become institutionalized in Christianity and serves as the engine of self-hatred even for many who do not consider themselves religious. The Greek word for sin means “missing the mark.” That...

For someone so inspired by the poverty and simplicity of St. Francis, it’s embarrassing for me to admit how dependent I am upon my smartphone. I have loads of apps for just about everything. It used to be that my brain was in my head. But now it’s too often in a six-inch-long little metal box with a screen.

What do you want to happen to your remains after you die?For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans have been taboo. That is changing.

This isn’t a new spirituality, but rather all spirituality. It is not exclusive to any person, sect, religion, race, sexual identity, or creed. It simply is. It is right here, right now, and it’s all good, even when it’s not. The importance of being able to “detach from our ideas of how we think it should be and continue to return to the center”...

The deepest mystery, and perhaps the one for which there will never be an answer that will completely satisfy the itch of the intellect, is the miracle of Life itself. In his book The Living Universe, Duane Elgin writes, “American Indian lore speaks of three miracles. The first miracle is that...

The flow of time, which appears to us as real as the flow of a river, may be nothing more than an illusion. “The distinction between past, present, and future,” Einstein writes, “is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Past, present, and future may all exist in a single infinitely indescribable moment.

Death will always carry with it a certain mystical component. No one can truly know what happens when we die, however, deathbed visits and other metaphysical phenomena certainly do provide a confirming hint of what lies beyond this world.

For every study that suggests a research link between prayer and healing, there are countless counter-arguments, rejoinders, rebuttals, and denials from legions of well-meaning “authorities,” whose principal motivation seems to be to save people from their own faith.

Our ego, which is that fearful, judgmental voice in our head, that never feels satisfied, that constantly feels inferior or superior to others, that always wants more, more, more in order to feel ‘happy’, well that ego can often try to hijack our spiritual journey...

I’m an “equal-opportunity mystic.” I ask for and receive help from masters from many traditions (and I need all the help that I can get!). I often call upon St. Francis when I work with animals who are sick, hurt, lost, or have been traumatized. I feel the quiet, gentle strength of St. Francis’ energy frequently when I am outdoors hiking or meditating.

Many people have misconceptions about meditation and these can sabotage your ability to enjoy the benefits of it. The biggest misconception is that you “should” be able to clear your mind. You are not expected to clear your mind. What you will do is find you’re getting better at ignoring the thoughts...

Events are going to happen to us on account of actions committed in the past. But the good news is that through our present responses, we mold our future — constantly, moment to moment to moment. The choice is...

Our minds are powerful indeed, powerful enough to connect with God through a wad of chewing gum. Everything is potentially sacred or profane, depending on how we think about it. As Shakespeare said, "thinking makes it so". True alchemy takes place in our minds. We transform lead into gold, devils into gods, and...

The possibility for creating peace must begin within each one of us as we become peaceful within ourselves. We are part of the whole. Our task is to heal separation, isolation, and defense of “us” as opposed to “them” within ourselves first; then we can bring that conscious awareness to all...

Written by Brad Christerson, Biola University and Richard Flory, University of Southern California | Print | Email

From Oct. 6 to 9, 2017, the National Mall in Washington, D.C. was filled with tents, worship music and prayer for the “Awaken the Dawn” rally. The purpose of the event, according to organizer Lou Engle, was to “gather around Jesus,” to pray for the nation and its government. It ended with a day of prayer by Christian women.

I strongly advocate cultivating an inner receptivity, an inner listening and attunement to the signals of the Essential Self. These intuitions are the way the deeper self informs us and guides us. If you ask your Essential Self to come into your con­sciousness, it will...

Written by Maarten Immink, University of South Australia | Print | Email

Remember then: there is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. This quote by Leo Tolstoy in What Men Live By and Other Tales is valuable wisdom and...

Written by Haley A Beer, University of Warwick and Edward Gamble, Montana State University | Print | Email

Millennials, we are told, have a different attitude to work than their elders. They want to work for organisations committed to values and ethics, where there is a higher purpose than simply making a profit.

Some religious teachings may start out as lessons in Oneness but, over time, they become distorted, reinterpreted to be a lesson that justifies duality. The ancient story of Adam and Eve is one example. A common version of the story explains that humankind is doomed to live in misery because...

Over mild wine with a friend, I steered the conversation to one of my favorite topics, spirituality. After my second eloquent sentence, she burst out, “Oh, I don’t have time to be spiritual!” I started to clarify but she changed the subject to her impossible office job.

The Ecstasy of St Teresa of Avila (1647-52) by 17th-century Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini is one of the most famous images of the Baroque period. Located in the Cornaro Chapel, Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, the marble sculpture represents Saint Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish nun canonised in 1622, sprawled on a cloud with an angel.

Misunderstanding, not being heard, and missing key information due to poor listening are at the crux of societal ills. One of the main reasons we listen poorly is because our internal noise levels are so turbulent and obtrusive that they mask most of what others are saying. Only bits and pieces of their message survive the...

Religion has been a divisive force for thousands of years. Yet religions have done much good. They have offered comfort and hope to the masses at a time when their consciousness was closed to true spirituality.

We do live in a spiritual universe, a universe that is intelligent and creative, and it is a thing of law and order. The universal Mind contains all knowledge. It is the potential ultimate of all things. To It all things are possible...

Faith is one of the most misunderstood yet, curiously, most important issues that the individual on the Path will face. Its real nature needs to be properly recognized so that it can be adequately used or taken advantage of. In practical terms, there are three kinds of faith...

Written by Joanne M. Pierce, College of the Holy Cross | Print | Email

A 2017 letter from the Vatican reminded the world’s Catholic bishops of a rule mandating the use of wheat gluten for the celebration of the Eucharist, a Christian liturgical service called the Mass by Catholics.

In my piano service business, I worked many seven-day weeks, and some fourteen- to sixteen-hour days. Once, when I had a particularly long day ahead of me, I decided I would put all my effort into deliberately working slowly. I couldn’t get a day off, so going slowly for at least one day seemed rather appealing.

Conservative Christian pastor John McTernan argued recently that “God is systematically destroying America” out of anger over “the homosexual agenda.” There were others who disagreed over the reasons for God’s anger, but not necessarily with the assumption that God can be wrathful.

We are told by spiritual teachers that we must seek enlightenment and that we must become ‘conscious’ and ‘awake’. However the proof of personal transformation is that our service and other actions demonstrate that we believe and understand eternal truths and the nature of...

Soul retrieval is one of the most effective and well-known practices to restore lost life force. The loss of life force is known as soul loss, and this can take place when we suffer a trauma—an accident, separation from a partner, the death of a loved one--or go through a pervasive period of difficult circumstances.

Have you ever felt like blaming god for all the bad things, which are going on around us? When we are happy we do not tend to wonder overly much about the purpose of life. Usually we wonder about the purpose of life when we feel low.

Across shamanic traditions soul loss--the wounding or fragmentation of a person’s soul as a result of trauma, abuse, war, conflicts, and so on, especially as suffered at an early age--is seen as a leading cause of illnesses, immune-system deficiencies, and all-around dysfunction of physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

The fact that we do not have a well-developed science of happiness today is really quite bizarre. We have an embryonic start in positive psychology, but why weren’t scientists studying happiness from the beginning, when Copernicus was studying the stars? This lack was demonstrated vividly in 1989, when the Dalai Lama...

During my near-death experience, it felt to me that all judgment, hatred, jealousy, and fear stem from people not realizing their true greatness. This goes against the natural flow of life-force energy...

The way we have been taught to make decisions, through intellect and emotion, is ultimately not our answer. If we can’t trust our thoughts and feelings, then, what can we trust? Are we bereft of guidance, impotent to know what is right for us?

There are signs everywhere to point you in the right direction, guiding you as to whether you are to go or stay put. There are also many that give you the encouragement you may need to keep moving forward. Think of a time that you had a bad gut feeling and...

Breathing is the bridge between our external and internal environments. The exhalation is linked to relaxation and the sense of well-being. It’s understood in expressions such as, “breathing a sigh of relief” and “breathing easy.”

Written by Helen Maree Hickey and Helen Dell, University of Melbourne | Print | Email

In the aftermath of the June terrorist attack in Manchester, an unusual thing happened. Mancunians gathered in St Ann’s Square ended a minute’s silence to honour the dead with a spontaneous rendition of Don’t Look Back in Anger by the homegrown rock band Oasis.

Here in these passages, is a powerful excerpt from the book, A Journey to Oneness that speaks directly to the dramas we are watching unfold, right now. It’s uncanny that these words of Divine wisdom were written in early 2003. They feel just as relevant to the state the world today as they did back then.

Is God a terrorist? No, obviously not. God is love. But not everyone agrees with that. “God is on our side” has been a rallying battle cry since religion was invented. But it’s inaccurate to blame religious differences for our bloody history of killing each other.

The journey to enlightenment is the removal of the seven veils of illusion. They can more easily be removed during moments of cosmic light or in special meditations. Alternatively you may wake up one morning feeling that things are different. A veil may have been released during your spiritual journey of the night...

Grief is like this. I was only half-listening to a song on the radio, yet a wave of sadness overcame me for the loss of my father. The song had nothing to do with my dad nor my mood, as I was content and even joyful before the song.

I was about to have my evening meditation at about nine o'clock. I reached to turn out the light when a voice spoke to me, as if a real person were standing close to me. The voice said, "Robert, it is time we had a long talk..."

If your mind is always racing, then you're probably overwhelmed with activities, which are over-stimulating your mind. Your commitments take up every minute of your day; from the time you wake up, until the time you go to bed. Your mind never gets a rest, not even when you sleep.

When I think of a spiritual retreat, I imagine a lot of meditation, quiet walks, no computers or media, listening to gentle music, and withdrawing from the busyness of the world. Some of that happened, but a different type of spiritual retreat emerged.

The verb hope means “to want something to happen,” while the noun hope refers to “a feeling of expectation and desire” and, in its oldest sense, trust. When we really expect that something we’ve hoped for will come to pass, it’s enough to lighten both our hearts and our steps...

Imagine for a moment what it's like to have absolute uncondi­tional trust in yourself. That includes trusting your body. Yes, even if it gets sick or if it has pain, can you trust it? No matter what happens...

I was for a number of years the choir director of a First United Methodist choir while all the while remaining, in my own offbeat way, a practicing Jew. Some may see my actions as hypocritical, but I do not. I learned a lot by becoming involved in the music and ritual of another religion.

I observe that most of humanity is feeling a vast amount of fear, stress, and worry in this ending of the Kali Yuga, which involves tremendous change. You cannot cross the bridge of fire and water and endure the storms of accelerated transformation without inculcating deep fearlessness...

To live a spiritual life, you don’t have to give up your job or become a monk or a nun. The spiritual life is where you are, whether or not you have a job, are married or have children. You don’t have to suddenly throw everything away and rush off to join a Tibetan monastery. In fact...

I realized that peace was the complete absence of fear. It was the feeling of true, pure, untarnished love, the light that shines in all of us, free of any fear-based thoughts or beliefs.So I ask the question: Is it possible to experience that peace on earth? I’m not sure, but I think it’s worth asking for.

We all desire peace, but most people look for it in the wrong place. We often think of the saying “peace of mind,” but we can’t rely on the mind to give us the peace that is desired from our Souls. Peace is not found in your mind. The mind begs for our attention, but there is no stability or peace if we react to every thought from the mind.

Meditation is the only way the mind can rest. All day long we think, emote, and react. All night long we dream. This most beautiful and valuable of all tools, our own mind, never gets a moment’s rest. The only way it can get a rest is when we sit down and concentrate on a meditation subject.

We know that mindfulness can transform the life of an individual. But did you know it could also change the world? We need to develop new social practices and encourage a broader cultural shift towards more sustainable living and climate action.

When Spirit notices something about your behavior that needs to evolve, it in-spires you to make a change for the better. All changes that are being willed by life-centered Spirit—as opposed to changes being willed by your self-centered ego—are born with ease and are cultivated with grace.

The words 'We are ALL One' have reverberated through the hearts and minds of Humanity in one form or another since the beginning of time. They do not express a lofty platitude or a sweet cliché even though our lower human egos have often perceived them as such. They profess a profound Truth.

What is meditation? Here is a good definition: Meditation is listening. It is listening not only with the ear, but with the soul—not only to sound, but to the silent language of inspiration. "Listening" itself, as I use the word here, entails much more than listening with the ears. It means, among other things...

Your ancestry and your family tree extend beyond your biological family; every human has a spiritual, multidimensional soul lineage as well. You may have a strong connection to the Egyptian lineage. You may go as far as to say that you are...

If it were your last days on earth, what would you do? Would it change how you live today? Maybe you would wake up earlier and be a bit more cheerful. You might even stay up later. You would definitely tell your family and friends how much you love them.

Every culture has had its own concept of evil or the devil. In Genesis, there is the famous temptation of Adam and Eve by evil—personified by the snake. While the Hebrew Bible mentions Satan by name only in the book of Job, the idea of evil permeates Jewish mystical and religious thought.

Choose one or two ways you can apply mindfulness in your daily life in the coming week. The more specific you are in choosing the activities, the more likely you are to follow through. You might choose washing the dishes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to begin your mindfulness experiment...

Emotions are the entryway into the infinite. They are your route back to your self, and they provide an easy access to the peace that is already there, calling you into your very essence. You might like to start by finding a quiet space where you can sit without interruption...

You would have thought that Western society might have grown out of the habit of portraying powerful women as witches, but a trope that usually ended badly for women in the Middle Ages is still being used in the 21st century.